Weekend Roundup

Now it's back to working full 5-day work weeks after not having done so for almost a month (sweet!). Last week there was bank holiday Monday, and I can't remember if the same thing happens in the US, but having multiple extra long weekend and short work weeks have been quite nice. Regardless I was still knackered Friday night and was asleep before midnight. That was probably for the best as I went up to Cambridge on Saturday. I caught a train from Liverpool St. station and found out on the train that halfway to Cambridge I would have to switch over to rail replacement bus services. This means that I had to take a coach to all the wee little towns that the trains stops at before reaching the end of the line. I was supposed to arrive at about 11:00, instead I rolled in at half 12. 5 hours of commuting for the entire trip! That is how much I spent in the town itself. Either way I toured some nice English country side and came to the conclusion that Britain is a very lumpy island. The Midwest is flat, Britain is lumpy.

The train station is a bit outside the city and I had read that it is a "hike" into the city center. After recalling my hilarious Prague story (the one where Jess and Stasia hate me forever), I figured no train station to city-centre walk could be quite like that, so I set off on foot. I don't know what people were talking about. It took less than 20 minutes to get there. I was starving by that point and went to the "backs" which are basically the quads of all the colleges between the buildings and the river Cam. It was an absolutely gorgeous day in all of southern England: sunny and shorts weather. I sat for a couple of hours, eating and people and punt watching. Punts are these long wooden boats you can rent or in which you can be taken for a cruise by a professional punter. The people who decided to rent them on their own struggled up and down the river. Sometimes they were struggling on top of the boat, sometimes they were struggling to get back in the boat =) At one point a punt managed to turn sideways underneath a bridge wherethen another punt rammed into it at full steam (punts are propelled by poles, not steam engines). It was funny to watch everyone flap their arms and yell. I took a picture, smiled and started my wanderings around town; I had had enough lounging in the sun.

Quick story though. On the other side of the Cam there was a bloke yelling at people (the ones who had no idea what they were doing) as they went by on punts, criticizing them. He was shouting loudly and laughing at them. But afterall they were going backwards and didn't realise it. He was wearing a backwards baseball cap, Oakleys, thong sandals "california" shorts and a jersey (maybe it was a polo with a popped collar). No wonder so many people "hate Americans." I'm surprised he didn't have a hemp necklace.

Cambridge is actually a somewhat difficult place to walk around, especially now during term time. Everything is blocked off to keep people like me out of the buildings and off the grounds. I paid to get into Kings College, and once I had seen that, I figured I had seen the rest by default. I walked around the rest of the city, avoiding the highstreet shops as much as possible, lounged for a while in another park, hunted down some flapjacks, checked out the markets and finally headed back to London. All in all I really enjoyed Cambridge. Quite a pleasant city (the beautiful weather helped a lot!) though I imagine the students get well pissed off at everyone barging in on them at term time, or any time I guess and because of that the school set up a very noticeable barrier around them.

Since all of the Aussies were out of the house for the weekend, Rhitik, Mario and I threw a little flat party. I got home around 8 and Rhitik and Mario were both gone. 2 hours later I was gone. My friends Sarah and JP came up and a lot of Rhitik's friends from work were there so we had a nice turn out. Off to the pub for a few hours and home via the kebab shop (this is probably the most typical london thing to do). A good time and late night were had by all.

Sunday was a terrible day in terms of weather, so I didn't feel bad about not going to Ultimate, once again. It has to have been 2 months now since I last played. That needs to change! I've been running and training hard for the last 6 weeks and have been trying to get ready for the summer season but it wont matter if I don't know how to throw a disc. Anywho, I sat around and watched football all day (my typical Sunday activity) and headed to my friend JP's house for dinner. He made a lovely green curry, I brought wine, and there were cakes afterwards. It was very international too! 3 from the US, JP from Canada, and we had Finland, Italy and Croatia to boot. I love meeting all these internationals. I'ts like college all over again but instead of asking "What's your major", it's "Where are you from, what are you doing" etc. London sparks up great conversations from those two little questions.

I came home to a house that had somehow fallen apart in the 5 hours I had been gone. There was a note on the door about how the kitchen and bathroom flooded, none of the electrics worked in either (except the fridge, thankfully), the carpet was soaked, can't use the toilet, etc. After everything had just fixed a couple weeks ago! Rhitik and I could not figure out what had happened because it looked like a tornado went through those two rooms, and only half the lights in the house were working. Incidentally, Rhitik and I were both gone while all of this happened and Scott and Ang had both come back from Amsterdam. I dunno. My landlord is supposed to have come over today (Monday), so hopefully I can take showers and use the toilet and cook when I go home. Otherwise I might as well just camp out in the park, it might be more comfortable than my bed.